GNU MediaGoblin: Free and Decentralized Media Sharing in Development
#published 2011-05-02 13:11
#author Deborah Nicholson

GNU MediaGoblin is a new software project that will provide users with
freely licensed and distributed photo sharing.  Lead developer Chris
Webber says, &#8220;We believe people should be able to own their
online data and that means someone has to build the tools to make it
possible.  We decided that someone would be us.&#8221; For the past
two months, Webber&#8217;s been laying down technical foundations and
assembling a team of contributors to start building GNU
MediaGoblin.

GNU MediaGoblin is being built by free software activists.  Chris
Webber and Will Kahn-Greene, both longtime `Miro`_ contributors, are
leading the Development Team.  Matt Lee and Rob Myers from `FooCorp`_,
the makers of `GNU FM`_ (the software that powers `Libre.fm`_ and
`GNU Social`_, are providing infrastructure.  Deb Nicholson, founder 
of the `Women's Caucus`_ is helping with community outreach.  As of this
announcement, `GNU MediaGoblin is actively welcoming new contributors
</pages/join.html>`_

.. _Miro: http://getmiro.com/
.. _FooCorp: http://foocorp.net/
.. _GNU FM: http://foocorp.org/projects/fm/
.. _Libre.fm: http://libre.fm/
.. _GNU Social: http://foocorp.org/projects/social/
.. _Women's Caucus: http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Womenscaucus

"Development couldn't be launching at a better time, given the recent
high-profile failures of so-called cloud services, which have reminded
us of the danger in relying on faceless corporations to store our
cherished possessions and mediate our personal interactions."  says
John Sullivan, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation.
GNU MediaGoblin has the official support of the GNU Project and will
be licensed under the `GNU Affero General Public License`_ and
federated using `OStatus`_, making it compatible with other free
network services such as `GNU Social`_, `StatusNet`_, and `GNU FM`_.

.. _GNU Affero General Public License: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html
.. _OStatus: http://ostatus.org/
.. _StatusNet: http://status.net/

Mike Linksvayer, Vice President of Creative Commons looks forward to
the launch, "GNU MediaGoblin is free software and has federation
built-in, removing the barriers of proprietary software and closed
networks faced by anyone who wants to offer customers superior media
hosting, to experiment with new features around sharing, curation, and
creation of media, or to simply have full control over their web media
portfolio."

An alpha release of the distributable photo-sharing system is planned
for this fall.  Later versions of GNU MediaGoblin will include support
for video and other media as well as tools to encourage user
collaboration on media projects.

We're looking for contributors to help build, run and promote GNU
MediaGoblin. Join us! `More information is here </pages/join.html>`_
or email press@mediagoblin.org for questions.  We look forward to
hearing from you!
